Need help - recorded for 1 hour straight with my XF300 and when i downloaded files off my card i had 10 MXF packets making up that hour - why the segmentation? shouldn't i have just 1 packet? each packet was exactly 5:13 in length... thanks in advance - steve

I work in Avid MediaComposer 5.5 and there is no problem with this segmentation. The media can be segmented, but a clip in timeline is not. I link all clips from the card with AMA (AvidMediaAccess), it's very simple (one click), then I can consolidate media to another hard disk or transcode into a different media codec. There is no problem with the segmentation.

I always copy the entire structure of the card when backing cards.

The filesystem being recorded to the CF card has file size limits, hence why it splits into 10 files. If the camera used a proprietary file system, it would possibly defeat file size limits at the cost that the CF card will not work on a standard PC or any other device. This is not ideal so most of the manufacturers stuck to the universally accepted FAT file system, which has a 4GB file limit.

Use the new Canon XF Utility V-1.2.1. Look instruction manual page 15.